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Foster Barham Zincke was a 19th-century British author and clergyman. He was born in 1820 in Bath, England and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was ordained as a priest in the Church of England and served in several parishes in England before becoming the Rector of the parish of Elton in Huntingdonshire.

Zincke was also a prolific writer and published several books on religious and moral topics, as well as poetry and works of fiction. Some of his better-known works include "The Life of Christ" and "The Minister's Manual".

While Zincke was a popular writer in his time and had a significant impact on Victorian religious and literary culture, he is not widely known today. Nevertheless, his works continue to be of interest to scholars of Victorian literature and religious history.

Today we are reading the first few chapaters of his book about his trip to Switzerland, A Month in Switzerland.

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PREFACE

THE LEGITIMATE USE of a Preface, like that of a Prologue, is merely to give explanations that will be necessary, and to save from expectations that would be delusive. I will, therefore, at once say to those who may have read my ‘Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Kedivé,’ that this little book belongs to the same family. The cast of thought and the aims of the two are kindred, and both endeavour to do their work by similar methods. They are, alike, efforts to attain to a right reading, and a right interpretation of nature, and of man. The differences between them are, perhaps, such as must result from the differences in the matter itself they had, respectively, to take account of. The field, in which the younger sister here makes some studies, is small in extent; its physical conditions, too, are those of our own part of the world, and its human issues those of our own times. It ought, therefore, to be looked at from very near points of view, and to be exhibited in pictures of much detail and minuteness. The field, however, which the elder sister surveyed, was wide in area, and rich with scenes of singularly varied character. Its place, indeed, in the panorama of nature possesses an interest which is exclusively its own; and its history includes a chapter in the construction of thought and of society, of which—while again its own with almost equal exclusiveness—the right appreciation is necessary for the right understanding of some contemporary and subsequent chapters in general history, and not least of the one that is at this day unfolding itself, with ourselves for the actors, we being, also, at the same time, the material dealt with, and fashioned. So it presented itself to my own mind, and so I attempted to set it before the reader’s mind.
To those, however, who are unacquainted with the book I have just referred to in explanation of the character and aims of its successor, I would describe the impulse under which both of them were written in the familiar words, ‘My heart was hot within me; and, while I was thus musing, the fire kindled, and at the last I spake with my tongue.’ I had been much stirred by a month spent among the Swiss mountains, not only by what might have been their effect upon me had I been alone, but also by what I had seen of their effect upon others—to one of whom, a child who was with me throughout the excursion (if mention of so small a matter, as it may appear to some, can be allowed), a little space has been given in the following pages; and this it was that first made me wish to fix in words the scenes I had passed through, the impressions I had received from them, and the thoughts that had grown out of them. But how unlike was the landscape, and those who peopled it, to what had come before the eye, and the mind’s eye, in Egypt! Instead of the long life-giving river and the broad life-repelling desert, both so replete with history, the import of which is not yet dead, as well as with natural phenomena of an unwonted character to eyes familiarised with the aspects of our little sea-girt sanctuary, as we fondly deem it, Switzerland offered for contemplation, in the order of nature, the ice and snow world of its cloud-piercing mountains; and, in the order of what is of existing human concern, unflagging industry, patient frugality, intelligently-adapted education, a natural form of land-tenure, and popular government; and invited the spectator of its scenery, as well as of the social and intellectual fermentation of portions of its people, in strong contrast to the immobility of other portions, to meditate on some of the new elements, which modern knowledge, and modern conditions of society, may have contributed for the enlargement and rectification of some of our religious ideas, inclusive, and, perhaps, above all, of our idea of God; for these ideas have at every epoch of man’s history been, more or less, modified by contemporary knowledge, and the contemporary conditions of society. These were the materials for thought Switzerland supplied. Upon all of those, however, which belong to the order of human concern, Egypt, too, in its sense and fashion, had had something to tell us.

As to the form and colouring of the work, I could have wished that there had been, throughout, submitted to the reader’s attention nothing but the scenes described, and the thoughts they gave rise to, without any suggestion, had that been possible, of the writer’s personality. In a work of this kind a vain wish: for in all books, those only excepted that are simply scientific, and in the highest degree in those that deal with matter, in which human interests preponderate, the personality of the writer must be seen in everything he writes. All that he describes is described as he saw and observed it. Others would have observed things differently. So, too, with what he thought about them; it must be different from what others would have thought. A book of this kind must, therefore, be, to a great extent, a fragment of autobiography, in which, for the time, the inner is seen in its immediate relation to the external life of the author. It gives what he felt and thought; his leanings, and likings, and wishes; his readings of the past and of the present; and his mental moorings. This—and especially is it so on a subject with which everyone is familiar, though it may be one that can never be worn out—is all he properly has to say. And his having something of this kind to say, is his only justification for saying anything at all. The expectation, too, of finding that he has treated matters a little in this way is, in no small degree, what induces people to give a hearing to what he says. They take up his book just because they have reason for supposing that he has regarded things from his own point of view, and so seen them from a side, and in a light, and in relations to connected subjects, somewhat different from those in which other people, themselves included, may have seen them; and that he has, therefore, taken into his considerations and estimates some particulars they must have omitted in theirs. Whether his ideas are to the purpose, whether they will hold water, whether they will work, the reader will decide for himself. But in whatever way these questions may be answered, one particular, at all events, is certain, a book of this kind must be worthless, if it is not in some sort autobiographical; while, if it is, it may, possibly, be worth looking over. On no occasion, therefore, have I hesitated to set down just what I thought and felt, being quite sure that this is what every reasonable reader wishes every writer to do.

One more preliminary note. I was accompanied by my wife and stepson, the little boy just now mentioned, who was between nine and ten years of age. Switzerland was not new ground to any one of the three. Occasionally a carriage was used. When that was not done I always walked. My wife was on foot for about half the distance travelled over. The little boy, when a carriage was not used, almost always rode. I give these particulars in order that any family party, that might be disposed to extract from the following pages a route for a single excursion, might understand what they could do, and in what time and way it could be done. The August and September of the excursion were those of last year, 1872.
F. B. Z.
WHERSTEAD VICARAGE:
January 16, 1873.

A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND

CHAPTER I.

TO ZERMATT

What blessings Thy free bounty gives Let me not cast away; For God is paid when man receives: T’ enjoy is to obey.—POPE.
August 26.—We left London at 8.45 P.M., and reached Paris the next morning at 7 A.M. We found the Capua of the modern world looking much as it used to look in the days that preceded the siege and the Commune. The shops were decked, and the streets were peopled, much in the old style. If, as we are told, frivolity, somewhat tinctured with, or, at all events, tolerant of, vice, together with want of solidity and dignity of character, are as conspicuous as of yore in the Parisian, we may reply that if they were there before, they must be there still; for a people, can no more change on a sudden the complexion of their thoughts and feelings than they can the complexion of their faces. These matters are in the grain, and are traditional and hereditary. The severity of taxation France will have to submit to may, when it shall have made itself felt, have some sobering effect, whereas the bribery and corruption of the Imperial régime only acted in the contrary direction. But time is needed for enabling this to become a cause of change; and much may arise, at any moment, in the volcanic soil of France, to disturb its action. All that we can observe at present is, that the people seem still quite unconscious of the causes of their great catastrophe. Their talk, when it refers to late events, is of treason and of revenge; as if they had been betrayed by anything but their own ignorance, arrogance, and corruption; and as if revenge, to be secured, had only to be desired. In such talk, if it indicates what is really thought and felt, there is scant ground for hope.
August 27.—We left Paris this evening at eight o’clock, taking the route of Dijon and Pontarlier. The sun was up when we reached Switzerland at Verrieres. There was no gradation in the scenery: as soon as we were on Swiss ground it became Swiss in character—mountainous and rocky, with irrigated meadows of matchless green in the valley. We were sure that the good people in the châlets below could not be otherwise than satisfied with the price they were getting for their cheese; for its quantity, and perhaps quality, we were equally sure that the greenness of their meadows was a sufficient guarantee. By the wayside we saw women with baskets full of wormwood, for making absinthe which will be drunk in Paris.
We breakfasted at Lausanne, and dined and slept at Vevey. We had thus got to Switzerland, practically, in no time at all, and without any fatigue, for we had been on the way only at night, and both nights we had managed to get sleep enough.
We had come, as it were, on the magical bit of carpet of Eastern imagination; which must have been meant for a foreshadowing of that great magician, the locomotive, suggested by a yearning for the annihilation of long journeys, without roads, and with no conveyance better than a camel: though a friend of mine, whose fancy ranges freely and widely through things in heaven above, and on earth below, tells me he believes that that bit of carpet was a dim reminiscence of a very advanced state of things in an old by-gone world, out of some fragments of the wreck of which the existing order of things has slowly grown.
My last hours in London had been spent in dining at the club, with a friend, who is one of our greatest authorities on sanitary, educational, and social questions; and our talk had been on such subjects. It is well to pass as directly as possible, and without tarrying by the way, from London and Paris, where man, his works, and interests are everything, to Switzerland, where nature is so impressive. The completeness of the contrast heightens the interest felt in each.
Those who give themselves the trouble, and do you the honour, of looking through what you have written, become, in some degree, entitled to know all about the matter. They are in a sort partners in the concern. I will therefore at once communicate to all the members of the firm that I did not go on this little expedition because I felt any of that desire for change by which, in these days, all the world appears to be driven in Jehu-fashion. I have never felt any necessity for this modern nostrum. I do not find that either body or mind wears out because I remain in one place more than twelve months together. I am a great admirer of White of Selborne; and I hope our present Lord Chancellor’s new title will lead many people to ask what Selborne is famous for; which perhaps may be the means of bringing more of us to become acquainted with a book which gives so charming a picture of a most charming mind that it may be read with most soothing delight a score of times in one’s life (one never tires of a good picture); and which teaches for these days the very useful lesson of how much there is to observe, and interest, and to educate a mind, and to give employment to it, for a whole life, within the boundaries of one’s own parish, provided only it be a rural one.
It is true that I have been in every county of England, and in most counties of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; and some general acquaintance with his own country—which is undoubtedly the most interesting country in the world—ought to an Englishman, if only for the purpose of subsequent comparison, to be the first acquisition of travel; and also that I have made some long journeys beyond the four seas, having set foot on each of the four continents; but I can hardly tell how on any one occasion it happened that I went. It certainly never was from any wish for change. It was only from taking things as they came. And so it was with this little excursion. It was not in the least my idea, nor was it at all of my planning. My wife wished to spend the winter in a more genial climate than that of East Anglia; and it was thought desirable that her little boy should go to a Swiss school, for, at all events, a part of the year, until he should be old enough for an English public school. And so, having been invited to go, I went. My part of the business, with the single exception of a little episode we shall come to in its place, was to be ready to start and to stop when required, and to eat what was set before me; in short, to take the goods a present providence purveyed. I recollect a weather-beaten blue-jacket once telling me—on the roof of the York mail, so all that may be changed now—that the charm of a sailor’s life was that he had only to do what he was told, and nothing at all to think about. Of this perhaps obsolete nautical kind of happiness, we housekeeping, business-bound landsmen cannot have much; but a month of such travel comes very near it. And if a man really does want change for the body, together with rest for the mind, here he has them both in perfection. What a delightful oasis would many find such a month in their ordinary lives of inadequately discharged, and too inadequately appreciated, responsibility! This little confidence will, perhaps, while we are starting, convey to the reader a sense of the unreserved and friendly terms on which, I hope, we shall travel together. I regret that, from the nature of the case, in these confidences all the reciprocity must be on one side.
August 29.—Left Vevey by an early train for Sierre. The line passes by Montreux, Villeneuve (where it leaves the eastern extremity of the lake of Geneva), Aigle, Bex, St. Maurice, Martigny, and Sion. At Sierre we took the diligence for Visp. This part of the valley of the Rhone is a long delta, which in the lapse of ages has been formed by the débris brought down by the Rhone, and the lateral torrents from the mountains. Much of it is swampy, and full of reeds. Some of this, one cannot but suppose, might be made good serviceable land by cutting channels for the water, and raising the surface of the land with the materials thus gained. Indian corn grows here very luxuriantly. It is a large variety; some of the stems had three cobs. This, the potatoes, and the tobacco—of which, or, at all events, of the smoke of which, we saw much—in thought connected the scene before us with the New World.
Between Sierre and Visp there are a great many large mounds in the valley. The side of these mounds which looks up the valley is always rounded. The face which looks down the valley, is sometimes rocky and precipitous. This difference must be the effect of former glacier action, at a time when the whole valley, down to Geneva, was the bed of a glacier, which planed off and rounded only that side of the mound against which it moved and worked. Above Visp the land is very poor, consisting chiefly of cretaceous detrital matter. This is covered with a pine forest, a great part of which is composed of Scotch fir, the old ones being frequently decorated with tufts of mistletoe.
Geologists are now pretty well agreed that the lake of Geneva itself was excavated by this old glacier. Its power, at all events, was adequate to the task. It was 100 miles long, and near 4,000 feet in thickness at the head of the lake, as can now be seen by the striated markings it left on the overhanging mountains. It acted both as a rasp—its under side being set with teeth, formed of the rocks it had picked up on its way, or which had fallen into it through its crevasses; and also as a scoop, pushing before it all that it could thrust out of its way. And what could not such a tool rasp away and scoop out, at a point where its rasping and scooping were brought into play, as it slid along, thicker than Snowdon is high above the sea, and impelled by the pressure of the 100 miles of descending glacier behind, that then filled the whole broad valley up to and beyond Oberwald? It was wasting away as it approached the site of the modern city, where it must have quite come to an end; for the lake here shoals to nothing; there could, therefore, have, then, been no more rasping and scooping. At the head of the lake, where the glacier-tool was tilted into the position for rasping and scooping vigorously, the water, notwithstanding subsequent detrital depositions, is 900 feet deep.
At Visp my wife and the little boy got on horseback. Another horse was engaged for the baggage. I proceeded on foot. Our destination was Zermatt. We got underway at 2 P.M., and reached St. Niklaus at 5.45; about twelve miles of easy walking. The situation of this place is good, for the valley is here narrow, and the mountains, particularly on the western side, rise abruptly. The inn also is good. I note this from a sense of justice, deepened by a sense of gratitude; because here an effort, rare in Swiss hotels, has been made to exclude stenches from the house; the plan adopted being that of a kind of external Amy Robsart gallery. From Visp to St. Niklaus the road is passable only for horses.
August 30.—My wife and the little boy took a char for Zermatt, which also carried the baggage. I was on foot. The distance is about fourteen or fifteen miles, slightly up hill all the way. The road is good and smooth. I must now begin to mention the conspicuous objects seen by the way. At Randa, in the Bies Glacier, which is that of the Weisshorn, we saw our first ice. This glacier descends so precipitously from the mountains, on the right of the road, that you can hardly understand how its enormous weight is supported. There are, however, on record some instances of its having fallen; and it is also on record that on one of these occasions the blast of wind caused by the fall of such a mass, was so great as to launch the timbers of houses it overthrew to the distance of a mile; but I would not back the truth of the record.
After an early dinner at Zermatt, my wife and myself walked to the foot of the Gorner Glacier, to see the exit from it of the Visp. It issues from a most regularly arched aperture. This is the glacier that descends from the northern and western sides of Monte Rosa, the sides of the Breithorn, and one side of the mighty Matterhorn.
We found the hotels at Zermatt overcrowded. This is a great rendezvous for those who do peaks and passes. In the evening, particularly if it is cold enough for a fire, the social cigar brings many of them together in the smoking-room. Among these, at the time we were there, was the hero of the season. He is a strong, wiry man, full of quiet determination. He was then doing, so ran the talk of the hotel, a mountain a day, and each in a shorter time than it had ever been done in before. To-morrow he is to climb the Matterhorn in continuous ascent from this place, in which fashion I understand no one has yet attempted it.

CHAPTER II.

THE RIFFEL—THE GORNER GRAT—SUNDAY—ZERMATT—SCHWARTZ SEE—MOUNTAINEERING

Not vainly did the early Persian make His altar the high places, and the peak Of earth-o’ergazing mountains; and thus take A fit and unwalled temple, there to seek The Spirit, in whose honour shrines are weak, Uprear’d of human hands.—BYRON.
August 31.—After breakfast my wife and I walked up to the Riffel Hotel. It is rather more than 3,000 feet above Zermatt. The little man rode. We were two hours and a half in doing it. It would be a stiff bit for beginners. The upper part of the forest, on the mountain-side, consists of Pinus Cembra. This is far from being either a lofty or a spreading tree. The lower branches extend but little beyond the upper ones. There is a good deal of reddish-brown in the bark. In this respect, as well as in the colour of its foliage, and in its form, it contrasts well with the larch and the spruce, though of course not so well with the Scotch fir. I heard that its timber is very lasting. The views, from the forest, of the Gorner glacier, and, when you are beyond the forest, of some of the neighbouring mountains, and of the valley of Zermatt, are good.
After luncheon at the Riffel Hotel, we walked to the summit of the Gorner Grat. Here you have what is said to be the finest Alpine view in Europe. You are standing on a central eminence of rock in, as far as you can see, a surrounding world of ice and snow. On the left is the Cima di Jazi, which you are told commands a good view into Italy. Just before you, as you look across the glacier, which lies in a deep broad ravine at your feet, rise the jagged summits of Monte Rosa with, at this season, much of the black rock showing through their caps and robes of snow. Next the Lyskamm, somewhat in the background; then Castor and Pollux, immaculate snow without protruding rock; next the Breithorn, then the naked gneiss of the Matterhorn, a prince among peaks, too precipitous for snow to rest on in the late summer, looking like a Titanic Lycian tomb, such as you may see in the plates of ‘Fellowes’s Asia Minor,’ placed on the top of a Titanic rectangular shaft of rock, five thousand feet high. Beyond, and completing the circle of the panorama, come the Dent Blanche, the Gabelhorn, the Rothhorn, the Weisshorn, over the valley of Zermatt, the Ober Rothhorn, and the Allaleinhorn, which brings your eye round again to the Cima di Jazi. What a scene! what grandeur for the eye! what forces and masses beneath for the thought! Here is the complement to Johnson’s Charing Cross and the East Anglican turnip-field. Both pleasant sights in their respective classes, but not enough of all that this world has to show.
The little boy in the morning, during our ascent of the Riffel, had not been able, when he dismounted, to take a dozen steps without resting, as it appeared both from having outgrown his strength, and from some difficulty in breathing; but in the afternoon he skipped up to the top of the Gorner Grat, an hour and a half, and ran down again, just as if he had been bred on the mountains. It was difficult to keep him on the path, and from the edges of the precipices. He was at the top some minutes before any of us—we were a large party, for several parties had drawn together in the ascent. I heard a lady exclaim, ‘There is the blue boy again’ (that was the colour of his blouse). ‘He has beaten us all.’ Never was there such a difference before between a morning and an afternoon.
As we descended the Gorner Grat a scud of snow passed by. The antithesis, common in the mountains, of gloom to sunshine, and of cold to warmth, was as complete as it was sudden. In a few minutes it was bright and warm again.
While we were at the hotel two American lads came up with their guides, and, after a rest of ten minutes, started for some pass. They had nothing on but coarse grey woollen pants, shirts of the same without collars, and boots very heavily nailed, or rather spiked. They were not more than seventeen years old, if so much.
The Riffelberg abounds in beautiful flowers; Gentians, Sedums, and Saxifrages reach almost to the top of the Gorner Grat. As might be expected at such a height, none rise, at their best, more than an inch or two above the ground. Gorgeous lilies and lovely roses would be as much out of keeping, as impossible, here. Such objects belong to the sensuous valley.
September 1.—There was a sharp frost this morning, but the sun was bright and warm all day. So warm was it at ten o’clock, that people were glad to sit about on the grass, some preferring the shade of the rocks. It was Sunday, and I was requested to conduct divine service. The reading saloon was prepared for the purpose. I shortened the service by omitting the first lesson, the Te Deum, and the Litany. Before commencing, I announced to the congregation that I should do this, giving as my reason that the room did not belong exclusively to us, and therefore that it was better to act upon our knowledge of this, than to be reminded of it afterwards by those who had withdrawn that we might hold our service. I had been called upon to conduct the service only a few minutes before it commenced, and as I had no memoranda for sermons with me, I took for my text the scene around us, and spoke of the effects such scenes, and the contemplation of nature generally, appear to have on men’s minds. The knowledge men now have of the solar system, and of the sidereal universe, does not prevent the heavens from discoursing to us as eloquently as they did to the Psalmist. Intelligible law is grander and more satisfactory for thought to rest upon than vague impressions of glorious power. So with the great and deep sea also, now that we know something about the place it occupies in the economy of this terrestrial system. It is the same with the everlasting mountains, since we have come to know something about the way in which they were formed and elevated, and how the valleys were cut out. Man is the child of Nature, in whose bosom he is brought up. It is true that there are some who cannot see that it is his duty and his happiness to acquaint himself with nature; but no one who had made any progress in the study of nature, ever thought lightly of what he had attained to. And this is true of the knowledge, not only of the grander objects of nature, such as the starry firmament and the great and deep sea, but equally of the most inconspicuous, and, as they appear to our senses, the most insignificant objects in nature. It is not more true of the eternal mountains than of the particles of moss that hide themselves in the crevices of the rock, or the lichen that stains its face, etcetera, etcetera
In the afternoon we walked back to Zermatt.
Though every effort was being made at Zermatt to prevent people from going up to the Riffel without tickets assuring them of accommodation at the Riffel Hotel, still, so many, in their impatience, set this regulation at defiance, and went up on the chance that they would be allowed six feet by three somewhere, that night after night, as we were told, the authorities were obliged—perhaps it was a necessity which was accepted not unwillingly—to convert the bureau, the salle-à-manger, and the reading-room, into dormitories. At all events, we were turned out of the reading-room before ten o’clock to make way for a pile of mattresses we found at the door, ready to be substituted for the chairs and tables we had been using. To be berthed in this way is far from pleasant; but it is not worse than spending the night in the crowded cabin of a small steamer, or in the hermetically-closed compartment of a railway carriage, with five other promiscuous bodies.
September 2.—Started this morning for the Schwartz See and Hornli. We were all mounted—it was the only time I was during the excursion. In ascending the mountain, when we were above the pine-wood, and so in a place where there was no protection, and where the zig-zags were short and precipitous, both the hind legs of the little boy’s horse slipped off the path. The animal was so old, and worn-out, and dead-beaten with its daily drudgery, that it had appeared to us not to care, hardly to know, whether it was dead or alive. But now it made an effort to recover itself, with the power or disposition for making which we should not, beforehand, have credited it. Perhaps the centre of gravity in the poor brute was never actually outside the path. I was close behind, and saw the slip and scramble. It was an affair of a few seconds, but it made one feel badly for more minutes.
At the Schwartz See, we sent the horses to the foot of the Zmutt glacier, and began the ascent of the Hornli. In about a quarter of an hour we made the discovery that the blue boy was not man enough for the Hornli. I do not know, however, that we should have seen much more if we had gone to the top. We were close to the mighty Matterhorn, of which the Hornli is a buttress, and at our feet was the great Gorner glacier. These were the two great objects, and neither of them would have been seen so well had we been higher up. In returning we went by the way of the Zmutt glacier, a wild scene of Alpine desolation. There is much variety, and much that interests in this excursion; the cultivated valley, the junction of the Findelen and the Zmutt with the Visp, the wooded and then the naked mountain, the two great glaciers, the sedgy, flowery turf above the wood, the little black tarn, the bare rock of the Hornli, and, over all, the shaft of the Matterhorn. On the ridge above the Schwartz See we found a handsome blue pansy. Somewhere else I saw a yellow one of almost equal size.
Our guide, Victor Furrer, speaks English well. He wished to come to England for the seven winter months, thinking that he could take the place of under-gardener or stableman in a gentleman’s house, or that of porter in a London hotel. Swiss education disposes the people to look for openings for advancing themselves in life beyond the narrow limits of their own country, and qualifies them for entering them.
The number of peak-climbers and pass-men assembled at Zermatt had increased during our short absence. Among the latter was an Irish judge, who did the St. Theodule. The law was in great force here, as was also the Church. The gentleman who had attempted the Matterhorn on Saturday, had been driven off by the weather. Though fine down here, it had been windy, wet, and frosty up there; and to such a degree that the face of this Alpine pier, for it is more of that than of a mountain, had become glazed with a film of ice. To-day he again attempted it from this place; and, the weather having been all that could be desired, he had gone, and climbed, and conquered. He found the air so calm on the summit that he had no occasion to protect the match with which he lighted his cigar; and, if he had had a candle, he would have left it lighted for the people at the Riffel to look at through their telescopes.
Notwithstanding the argument which may be founded on the graves (one a cenotaph) of the four Englishmen in the God’s acre of the Catholic church of Zermatt, one cannot but sympathise with the triumph, and applaud the pluck and endurance of our mountaineering countrymen. It must be satisfactory, very satisfactory indeed, for a man to find that he has such undeniable evidence that he is sound in wind and limb, and, too, with a heart and head to match; and that he can go anywhere and do anything, for which these by no means insignificant qualifications are indispensable. Mountaineering, in its motives, to a great extent resembles hunting, and, where there is a difference, the difference is, I think, to its advantage. It is more varied, more continuously exciting, more appreciated by those who do not participate in it, and, which is a great point, more entirely personal, for your horse does not share the credit with you. Shooting and fishing can bear no comparison with it. The pluck, endurance, and manliness it requires are not needed by them. It is also a great merit that it is within the reach of those who have not been born to hunting, fishing, and shooting, and will never have the means of paying for them. All these pursuits have each its own literature; and, as the general public appears to take most interest in that of the mountaineers, there is in this, as far as it goes, reason for supposing that the pursuit itself is of all of them the most rational and stirring.
Alpinism is also a natural and healthy protest in some, whose minds and bodies are young and vigorous, against the dull drawing-room routine of modern luxury; and in others against the equally dull desk-drudgery of semi-intellectual work, to which so many are tied down in this era of great cities. It is for a time a thorough escape from it. It is the best form of athleticism, which has its roots in the same causes; and it is, besides, a great deal which athleticism is not.
To a bystander there is something amusing in the quiet earnestness with which a peak-climber discusses the possibilities of an ascent he is contemplating. I was with two this afternoon who were about to attempt a mountain by a side on which it had not yet been scaled. The difficulty was what had hitherto been regarded as pretty much of a sheer precipice of some hundreds of feet. One of the two, however, had examined it carefully with his glass, and had come to think that there was roughness enough on its face for their purpose. The guides who were present were of the opposite opinion. That it had never been ascended on that side, but might perhaps prove not unascendable, was the attraction.